User blog:Gearoid/Week 1
We began our summer project with our first meeting on Monday 8/6/2015, with myself, Rich, Cian, and Niamh present. The meeting was quite informal and we spent the majority of it brainstorming and throwing around ideas and we also discussed what we were all looking to achieve from the project, namely, to produce an original and memorable project that will leave a lasting impression on the examiners and to greatly enhance our creative skillset. Every member of the team outlined their specific interests and areas of the course that they would hope to improve upon during the course of the project, and in addition to this, we also looked at the projects completed by the students from last year’s interactive digital media course. During the course of the meeting, we spoke of new forms of media that are becoming increasingly popular, in particular the interactive documentary, which was covered extensively in the Interactive Narratives module taught by Dr. Marguerite Barry. There was a distinct air of enthusiasm for the interactive documentary concept, mainly because the concept itself is quite broad, and also because it incorporates many different forms of media, which would in turn allow members to focus on a specific area that is relevant to their interests and expertise. There was also enthusiasm for a museum and gallery exhibition and it was agreed that we would go on an informal field trip to a selection of free galleries and museums in Central Dublin. The group spent the morning and afternoon of Tuesday 9/6/2015 visiting some of the free museums and galleries located in Dublin, which were: The National Museum of Ireland, W.B. Yeats Exhibition at the National Library, The National Gallery of Ireland, and The Science Gallery at Trinity. Although the trip itself was informative and we saw many fascinating exhibits, there was very little in the way of interactivity or anything relating to digital media. After the trip, the group held another brainstorming session, in which the prospect of an interactive documentary was again discussed. We also spoke about different concepts and themes that could be incorporated into our project, for example: time, sensory deprivation, perception of time, inventors killed by their own inventions, modernisation of vintage objects. There were plenty of ideas thrown around in the meeting, and we agreed to spend the intervening period until our next meeting thinking about what fields in particular (programming, audio-visual, design, and sensor technology) that we should focus on for the project. The third meeting of the week was held on Thursday 11/06/2015 and was also another intense brainstorming session. Everyone put forward certain concepts and ideas they were interested in and we also researched if there were any anniversaries of significant historical events happening soon, to see if they could be incorporated into our project. After randomly selecting pairs of concepts and historical events and/or anniversaries to see if a connection could be made between them, the pairing that garnered the most interest was Alice in Wonderland and Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. At the end of the meeting, we all agreed to spend the weekend reading the story and researching the theory of relativity, to see if any explicit connections could be made between the two, and if they could be used to form the basis of our project. Category:Blog posts